Advertised Extra

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This is a character who is supposed to be a main character, but for whatever reason does not get developed nearly as much as his counterparts. He's on all the advertisements, he gets a witty one-liner in the trailer, but when the release date comes, he almost fades into the background. Basically, he was Demoted to Extra before the story even came out.

This character is introduced at some pivotal point (usually the beginning) and then is generally ignored for the rest of the story. Maybe he's seen for all of five minutes in a three-hour movie, or maybe he just lurks in the background while his friends do all the important stuff. Whatever the case, to qualify for this trope, a character must have been introduced in a way that implied he was going to be important, but is left out of most of the story.

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If the wasted character is in a series, the author may realize his mistake and give him some development in later episodes/books/etc. Alternatively, he can just put him on a bus or kill him off for real to avoid having to deal with another character.

Also may occur if an actor is in the opening credits but is seen in very little of the movie. Also could appear only in the cold opening and by the time their name appears in the opening credits they are not seen in the rest of the movie. This tends to be used with big named actors, and often in DVD re-releases of movies they appeared in before the big breakout role that made them stars. Might overlap with One-Scene Wonder. Also could be known as an Opening Credits Cameo.

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Compare The Artifact, who starts out prominent and then fades. An advertised extra is advertised as prominent, but never actually achieves that status. Also compare Fake Guest Star, where an actor is credited as a guest star but appears to be part of the main cast. See Stunt Casting when famous actors are cast in usually bit parts in hopes on cashing in on their popularity. Contrast Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer, where a prominent character appears in little to no advertising. Billing Displacement occurs after a work is released when the creator wants to capitalize on the Retroactive Recognition of a character, regardless of how short that role may be.

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Examples:

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Anime & Manga

In One Piece Film: Gold, Despite being announced in the film, Rob Lucci and Sabo barely play a role in it and at best just have a brief battle outside the Gran Tesoro. They don't even interact with the Straw Hats. Likewise Koala has one scene in the film talking with Sabo.

The main series tends to suffer this problem, with the main characters often obtaining monsters that end up receiving less screen time than the guest stars.

Advertisements and trailers for various movies often prominently feature one or more Pokémon who ultimately play a very minor role, if any at all (it doesn't help that almost all of them lie through their teeth).

The website for Pokémon: Genesect and the Legend Awakened presented a Sableye among the cast as if it were a major player. After the first ten minutes, it becomes a background character. There's also the bulk of the Genesect Army, who get very few lines and no personalities, being outshined by the Douse Drive and Red Genesect.

The poster for Pokémon: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages has Arceus standing behind the main cast. In the actual movie, it's only ever talked about until it shows up out of nowhere in the climax.

The original teaser for Pokémon: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel was the first appearance of Zygarde's Complete Forme. In the actual movie, Zygarde only assumes its Complete Forme towards the end for one scene, and none of the main cast even see it.

Kouchuu from KoihimeMusou is treated as a main character in both promotional art and anime opening, but in the first season she only appears for one episode before joining the Final Battle (everyone else gets at least 4-5 eps of hanging with the heroine) and for the next seasons she has to Stay in the Kitchen while everyone else has adventures (except Bachou on season 2, and she got A Day in the Limelight to compensate).

The Kämpfer mobile suit in Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket. Heavily merchandised and loaded with weapons. It wreaks havoc across the colony for a few minutes, then gets torn to shreds in less than a minute by the Gundam Alex. Most likely the point of it's non-use; it was crashed early on, and in repairs up until the finale. 0080 wasn't about the Gundam battles itself, but knew that the build up for the final clash would make it more memorable.

Aria the Scarlet Ammo gives us Reki, who is put on par with Aria, Shirayuki and Riko in promotional artwork but ended up getting a few tiny (albeit important) appearances while all the others got An Arc and/or plenty of screentime. In the novels, however, she's more prominent, and even get two novels dedicated for her.

Tigerstar in the Warrior Cats manga Tigerstar and Sasha, is this for the second and third books. In the first book, he was the love interest. However, in the second book (on which he is the only one on the cover), he shows up, asks the hero a question, and is never seen again! In book three, he only appears in dream sequences. It's like the writers didn't know what to do with him, so they hid him in a cupboard and hoped no one would find him.

Subverted by Yuina in Hanasaku Iroha, as she was treated as part of the main cast but barely appeared... until episode 13-14, which were focused on her, and afterwards she started hanging around the main girls all the time.

Cammy in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie appears in every piece of promotional material and tie-in for the Japanese release, to the point that it almost seems as if she's one of the main characters (along with Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li), despite having a screentime of less than five minutes. Cammy's only significant scene involves her assassinating a British politician while under M. Bison's brainwashing.

Chalia Bull in the original Mobile Suit Gundam was played up as the Ace Pilot from Jupiter who'd be able to completely change the war. He was a Newtype, a great pilot, and not only that, he was piloting a new Prototype Mobile Armor with remote weapons. Thing is, he only had a few minutes of screen time...in one episode... And he died...

The cover of Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn features many villains both from the main series as well as the other DBZ films, despite that none of them play any major role in the film apart from a tiny cameo appearance. Some, like Cooler and Nappa, dont even appear despite being on the cover!

Most advertisements and promotional images for the Dragon Ball Z film Lord Slug featured one of his henchmen Zeeun, in the film itself he only shows up for a few minutes and is killed by Slug when he accidentally insults his age before he even has a chance to fight.

Dragon Ball Super had an ad for its Universal Survival Arc which showed the ten warriors for Universe 7. One of those was Majin Buu, who seemed like he would be able to get into action for once since he'd essentially been sidelined since the Battle of Gods Arc. He prepares for the tournament, getting a brand new form... then ends up dropping out due to falling asleep and ends up getting replaced by the real tenth member: Frieza.

Sai in the anime adaptation. While he's an important character during the arc he debuts in, his relevance to the plot and character development pretty much end there, and gets little to do afterwards. Yet lots of openings after his debut still featured him almost as prominently as Naruto and Sakura, despite both his screentime and contribution to the plot being minimal. He's much less featured in the openings (to the point of being absent in some of them) once the anime reached the Fourth Ninja War arc.

In the case of Naruto Gaiden, while Boruto was seen prominently in the promotional material for this spinoff, he has a rather small role whereas his classmate Sarada has become an Ascended Extra.

The Anime of the GameSands of Destruction is subtitled Sekai Bokumetsu Rokunin, or "The Six People Who Will Destroy the World". Agan is supposed to be one of the main six characters, but he tends to be just some guy who shows up every few episodes and says a few lines, maybe offers the team a ride (for a price, of course). It's never implied he's following the group or has any real interest in them; he just...appears. Of course, part of the problem could be that this Alternate Continuity has removed his status as Morte's Childhood Friend, and a good deal of his development in the game comes from their Like Brother and SisterVitriolic Best Buds relationship. The other part could be that, since he never officially joins the team this time around, the writers just have to figure out a way to shoehorn him in somewhere.

From the way Hazuki and Sapphire are advertised and featured in Sound! Euphonium material you would think they're of the utmost importance. While they are still above being Those Two Guys their friendship with the protagonist is put on the backburner for Kumiko's friendship with Reina.

Danganronpa 3 heavily built up Nagito Komaeda as major character in Side:Despair, as per his role in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (where he was a main character). While he doesn't quite get enough screentime to be called a minor character, he still doesn't much screentime or relevance outside of A Day in the Limelight and gets Put on a Bus a third of the way in. Also, official material for Side:Future, including the opening, gives off the impression that Yasuhiro Hagakure is part of the Final Killing Game. He's actually stuck outside without a bangle and is only occasionally cut to.

Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu prominently features Tessa Testarossa, one of the central characters from the main series, in both the opening and closing as well as promotional artwork. She only appears in a 2-part episode.

While Digimon Adventure tri. had always intended to center the original characters of Adventure over their apprentices of 02, it is the apparent defeat of the 02 characters that steals the trailers to the first film...and so far through five of the six planned films, they haven't been seen or heard onscreen yet, and only Ken has been verbally referenced at all.

Yukako Yamagishi is prominently featured in all three of the anime openings despite only appearing in a handful of episodes, a few of which only have her in brief Cameos with minimal dialogue. Her part wasn't much bigger in the original manga, where she still managed to appear on quite a few chapter covers.

Hugtto! Pretty Cure featured, in the opening, a giant golden spirit known as "Mother Heart". However, she does very little in the series, only showing up in the Cures "Tomorrow For Everyone" attack, even if that was the attack used to defeat the Big Bad. The only major thing she does is split the final Transformation Trinket into two so that it can be used by both Ruru and Emiru, but even then its treated as a Deus ex Machina.

Arts

Icarus in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus◊ is almost hidden. You can only see his leg sticking out of the water in the bottom right corner of the image. None of the other people in the painting seem to notice Icarus falling into the water; in fact, the shepherd seems to be actively focused on something else.

See also W. H. Auden's 1938 poem about the Bruegel painting, "Musée des Beaux Arts", which addresses this issue directly.

Doctor Light sometimes appears in pin-ups or other pieces of official art promoting Justice League International, despite the fact that she quit the team at the end of the very first story arc.

Marvel Comics usually puts major characters on the corner box of their comic covers. For the limited series Marvel The Lost Generation, every issue since the first (which had the words "EXPLOSIVE FIRST ISSUE!" instead) featured Mako the Atlantean, whose prominence was limited to a few pages of the first issue, as well as a cameo in the tenth issue as a fetus in a jar. A more fitting character would have been Effigy, or the Black Fox, or even Dr. Cassandra Locke.

Shari Flenniken's Trots and Bonnie comic strips are about a girl named Bonnie and her talking dog Trots...or so the title would have you believe. The real deuteragonist is Bonnie's troublemaking friend Pepsi, with Trots not doing much besides tagging along and delivering a punchline at the end.

Fan Works

Tagging systems on sites like Archive of Our Own can lead to this. Some authors will create a tag for every character that appears in the story, nor matter how minor, so someone searching through the tag will find stories that don't involve the character they're looking for at all.

If you've never seen Chicken Little, you'd think Morkubine Porcupine was a major character. He featured heavily in TV spots and on the website, and appears on the DVD cover (in place of Abby Mallard, who was a main character) yet has 3 lines of dialogue in the whole film ("Yo", "no", "whoa") and barely contributes to the story.

The Disney Princess merchandise line includes Mulan and Pocahontas as official princesses, but they're commonly left out of most of the merchandise. Often replaced by unofficial princesses Anna and Elsa from hit Frozen, making a subversion of this trope.

Patrick Stewart's Poop character in The Emoji Movie shows up frequently in trailers and even has his own poster. In the movie proper, he only has a handful of lines and is only a minor character at best.

Fantastic Mr. Fox: Owen Wilson plays the coach at the animals' school, appears in one scene with a few lines, and that's it. He's still mentioned on the cover of the DVD box as if he were playing a major character.

Many Finding Nemo ads show minor characters Bruce and Crush, who have very small roles in the movie.

Food Fight! had a very bad example of this, which is possibly due to troubled production. The movie was supposed to be used to promote several supermarket food brands, and as such, the cover had Mrs. Buttersworth, Twinkie the Kid, the Vlasic stork, Charlie the Tuna, etc. However, each of these characters were basically extras, only appearing in one or two scenes.

Bobby from A Goofy Movie had a big enough role that it made sense for him to be advertised—or it would have if the trailers didn't play him up to the detriment of three secondary characters with bigger roles than his, including completely ousting one of them. From viewing the trailer and looking at the cover art you would probably think Bobby was a main character on par with or barely beneath Goofy and Max. He actually has six scenes worth of screentime, one of which is spent doing nothing interesting or important and not being acknowledged, five of which are in the first act, and he completely disappears without even a mention for the entire second act and most of the third. He also has only one contribution to the plot.

Taken to an extreme by having the advertisements center around Scrat the sabre-toothed squirrel, then releasing a movie where Scrat was only occasionally seen outside of the scene from the advertisement. The three main characters weren't even in some of the ads. Scrat is widely considered the best character of the series, even if he's hardly part of the main plot.

Rappers Drake and Nicki Minaj in Continental Drift. Their combined screen time is about five minutes and yet Fox saw it was enough to put their names on the poster. Meanwhile, actual actors like Peter Dinklage, Nick Frost, Aziz Ansari and Rebel Wilson have far more screen time than those two but barely appeared in the marketing.

Jack-Jack doesn't feature nearly as much in the action film The Incredibles as you'd be inclined to think by the promotional material. In fact, he doesn't even wear his full Incredible outfit until literally the last fifteen seconds of the film.

George Takei was billed heavily alongside the other main actors for Kubo and the Two Strings. In reality his character only appears at the very beginning and end, and he only has 4-5 lines total in the entire film.

Master Thundering Rhino in Kung Fu Panda 2. He was advertised on the official website and other promotional material, but only got about two minutes of screentime before being Killed Off for Real. To a lesser extent, Masters Ox and Croc apply as well. The DVD special Secrets of the Masters makes up for this, as Ox, Croc, and Rhino are the main characters.

Mei Mei from Kung Fu Panda 3. The trailers made it seem like she was going to be a major character and Po's love interest; while it does initially seem like they'd become a couple, they only share a few scenes together and she instead chooses the dopey crooked toothed panda after she fixes his teeth when she accidentally hits him with nunchucks.

Lizzy from Meet the Robinsons is featured prominently on the poster (which aside from her only includes the main characters), despite the fact that she is in no way essential to the plot, has maybe one full minute of screen time, and anywhere from two to five lines.

The present-day version of Dr. Krunklehorn is also featured on the poster alongside many characters who appear in the future, which is odd because she ends up being Lewis' adopted mother.

The Robinsons' dog Buster (the one who wears glasses) was also prominently shown in advertisements, despite having only one scene. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the entirety of the dog's screen time.

Pua the pig appears in all the advertisements and merchandise for Moana, even though he has a very small role in the actual film, appearing at the beginning and end, and not accompanying the titular character on her journey. Instead, the rooster Heihei fills the animal sidekick role.

Songbird Serenade in My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) is featured front-and-center on displays at stores as if she is the protagonist, has her own plush toy, a large plastic doll, and a lot of other miscellaneous merchandise, but she appears only at the beginning, for one scene halfway through, and for the first credits song, with very little plot relevance. Undoubtedly this is to draw in fans of Sia, as she voices Songbird and is the basis for her design. Averted with the advertisement not related to the toys though, in which she is either in the background or absent entirely.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Yoda appears on the main poster with his lightsaber drawn, yet he only has a small speaking role in the first quarter of the film and a small, silent role at the end, with absolutely no fighting done by him whatsoever. Likewise with Commander Cody who only has a few, mostly background appearances and three short lines in the entire film. Yet he appears on the main poster in a similar fashion to Captain Rex, in the background.

Michelangelo and Donatello in TMNT. All the posters, promotional material, and merchandise featured all four turtles evenly, but in the actual film they barely do anything and only appear in about a third of it in total.

One of the first things revealed in the lead-up to Turtles Forever was that the movie would feature TMNT2003 versions of movie villains Tokka and Rahzar. The poster for the movie makes them one of its most notable elements, even more than several prominent characters. In the actual movie, they appear for less than a minute, unnamed, as part of a larger group of mooks.

Piglet in the first Winnie-the-Pooh short, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. He appears in the opening theme, but is absent from the actual short itself, and he would not properly show up until two years later in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.

Every single cameo by a video game character in Wreck-It Ralph. The way that Disney marketed the film, it seems like they tried to make the cameos the stars and push the actual main characters to the background (but at least they have the honesty of putting at least one of the four protagonists along with the cameos in the posters). Like many animated films, there were even character-themed posters that a cameo character had all to themselves. These characters rarely appeared outside of the opening scene, and some of them didn't even have lines.

Many of the supporting characters from Zootopia can fall under this, considering posters and other ads were littered with characters who had only a few (if no) lines and barely any screen time. Yax and Gazelle are particularly guilty of this but the worst offender is probably Flash, who was in only two scenes but had the entire teaser trailer centered around him (in fact it's one of his two scenes in its entirety).

Films  Live-Action

Any fans of B movies know that if the B movie heavily advertises a "name actor" being in the film, there is a high chance they are barely even in the movie.

A big example of this is Iron Man 3. Wang Xueqi and Fan Bingbing have extremely minor roles (and in fact, Fan's scenes were not even included in the American release), but the overseas trailers depicted both actors alongside Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow as though they were playing main characters.

X-Men: Days of Future Past cast popular French actor Omar Sy as Bishop, and popular Chinese actress Fan Bingbing (there she is again!) as Blink. The two heroes each got their own posters and were featured in the various trailers and TV spots. In the actual film, they only appear in a few scenes and have minimal dialogue. Blink at least gets a few cool action scenes, though.

Rick Genest, aka "Zombie Boy", was featured prominently in posters◊ for 47 Ronin. He appears in one scene in the film that lasts about three minutes.

Jeanette from Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel: The boys and her sisters all get ample screen time, whereas Jeanette seems to fall by the wayside. Older fans know her from the 1980s cartoon as a genius, but this never really comes out. She's never seen without her sisters, and she gets about 5 minutes of screentime that isn't singing. Fortunately, she gets significantly more screen time in the third movie. Dave as well actually has much more of a minor role than the film let on, as he's hospitalized for nearly all of it. The main human in the movie is actually a relative of his played by Zachary Levi.

Despite being hyped up as a major supervillain in trailers and posters, Alexei "The Rhino" Sytsevich has around five minutes of screen-time in The Amazing Spider Man 2, and we only see him as the Rhino for around two minutes. Alexei appears in exactly two scenes: the Action Prologue of the movie, and the final scene—where the credits roll just as Spider-Man swings in to fight him.

A really weird backwards (though possibly deliberate) version happened with Angel Heart. For anyone who hasn't seen the movie, it really does look like Robert De Niro's character is such. He's always billed as a "special appearance" even though the posters and DVD cover prominently shows him in front of the leads, making it appear that the film is just overbilling an actor who in actuality only has one scene. In the actual movie, while he doesn't have as much screentime as the lead, De Niro does make multiple appearances and his character turns out to be Satan himself, suddenly making the cover in which he is prominently displayed make a disturbing amount of sense.

The advertising campaign for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice heavily advertised the fact that Gal Gadot would be making her debut as Wonder Woman in the movie, and that Jason Momoa would be making his debut as Aquaman. Though neither of them were actually pictured in the posters for the movie, Warner Bros. widely distributed publicity photos of them in costume as their characters, released action figures of the two for the film's various toy lines, and prominently featured footage of Gadot in the final trailer. In the actual movie, however, Wonder Woman is a minor supporting character at best, and doesn't appear in costume until the climax of the movie; if the trailers and publicity photos hadn't given it away, moviegoers might actually have been surprised to learn that the mysterious European antiquities dealer was Wonder Woman all along. Aquaman is even worse: Jason Momoa never even appears in the flesh, and is only seen in some brief submarine footage in Lex Luthor's metahuman research archives. Ironically, Ezra Miller's the Flash has actual dialogue and screen time, but he wasn't featured in advertisements and didn't get an action figure.

After many fan and professional reviewers reacted to the film along the lines of "Wonder Woman's brief appearance is the only good thing about it", the British posters for the DVD and online release went so far as to feature Wonder Woman front and centre, with Superman and Batman behind her in "sidekick" position.

In a way Beetlejuice kind of fits this trope, despite being the title character (sort of), and the main focus of all advertisements and promotional material is on screen no more than 17 minutes of the film's 92 minute run time. The film might as well have been called The Maitlands if it hadn't been for the fact that Beetlejuice stole the movie. Chances are the only scenes you remember are the scenes with him and the "Banana Boat Song" scene. The Broadway musical attempts to redress this by re-writing the plot so Betelgeuse now appears almost immediately and has a much more consistent presence and relevance throughout the story.

Brimstone: Kit Harington receives top billing and his face is even on the cover, but his character only has a few scenes.

The 2010 Religious Horror movie Camp Hell had a case of this with Jesse Eisenberg that actually resulted in legal action. One of the movie's posters consisted almost entirely of his face and the title and he was highlighted in the trailer, but his character only appeared in a few flashback scenes. As a result, Eisenberg sued the distributor, Lionsgate Entertainment and Grindstone Entertainment, for fraudulent advertising.

After Robin Williams became famous, he was given top billing in re-releases of his feature film debut Can I Do It Till I Need Glasses? which is a series of sketches involving sex jokes, Williams only appeared in two segments amounting to a minute of screen time.

The beginning of Celeste and Jesse Forever imply the film is going to be evenly split between Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samburg) but after ten minutes they stop hanging out together and the story sticks with Celeste; Jesse remains in the film on and off and he is important to the plot but he's definitely a supporting character in Celeste's story and gets far less screentime overall.

Roux (Johnny Depp) in Chocolat was advertised on all the posters, but actually doesn't appear until an hour into the movie and only has a minor role compared to the less advertised characters.

Clash of the Titans gave special focus to Danny Huston as Poseidon, Luke Evans as Apollo and Alexa Davalos as Andromeda. None of them gets more than about five minutes of screen time. In the latter two cases, the movie underwent extensive re-shoots and their characters ended up severely cut down. There was also considerable hype about some of the other Greek Gods, such as Hestia and Artemis. They would have had only a couple of lines in group scenes.

In Country Crush, Jana Kramer receives top billing and takes up the majority of the cover while only being a supporting character while the actual main characters are reduced to the bottom third of the cover.

Joel McCrea receives top billing in Cry Blood, Apache, but only appears for about 10 minutes in the segments that bookend the main story. And he interacts with no other character in the film.

Ultra Violet receives top billing in Curse of the Headless Horseman'. She appears in one scene as a foreign noblewoman looking to buy the ranch: a scene that has no bearing on the plot.

Luchino Visconti's The Damned gives Florinda Bolkan a featured and credit in the opening credits. Bolkan's role amounts to a two minute, wordless cameo as Martin's escort in the wedding scene.

Mr. T in D.C. Cab. The advertisers were hoping to cash in on his popularity from Rocky III, despite the fact that his character, aside from one memorable monologue in front of the Lincoln Memorial, has about as much screen time as most of the non-essential characters of the company (which, by the way, included Bill Maher and Gary Busey).

Emma Roberts is one of the three actors to appear on the poster for the 2013 crime drama Empire State, even though she gets minimal screen time in the actual film. Strangely enough, Michael Angarano doesn't appear in any of the promotional material despite playing one of the main characters.

EuroTrip: The Absinthe Fairy appears on every poster and advertisement, even though he only appears in two scenes of the finished film. Like Scrat, he is a fan favorite since it's release.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis in The Expendables. The two actors were featured on nearly every advertisement for the film but appear in only one scene. The trailers for the first sequel showed that Arnie and Bruce were getting more screen time of the action variety, though they're still not the lead characters. For that matter, both Toll and Hale also have very minor roles despite having equal billing in the film. The only real members of the team to have any major roles are Barney, Lee, and to a lesser extent Yin.

Most trailers and TV spots for The Fighting Temptations prominently featured Steve Harvey who plays an alcoholic radio host. While he is featured in a total of eight scenes (two are just voice overs), each appearance is brief and all he does is provide comic relief through his glaringly obvious commentary. He never interacts with any of main characters, except once. In spite of all this, Harvey receives fifth billing in the opening credits.

Ghost in the Shell: The members of Section 9 have their own posters and their actors, including Canon Foreigner Ladriya, revealed details about their characters while promoting the movie. With the exception of the Major, Batou and Aramaki, the rest barely have some screentime in the movie itself.

The DVD cover of Half a Sixpence features the main character, Kipps, along with a beautiful woman in a lacy leotard. That character, whose name is Laura, only appears in one scene early in the movie.

Early Halloween: Resurrection trailers heavily featured Jamie Lee Curtis and made it seem as though she played a big part in the movie. She ended up appearing in one scene at the beginning... before being killed off. She is also positioned at the forefront of the movie poster◊. It could be argued that she is actually a Decoy Protagonist since viewers obviously weren't supposed to see her death coming.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince gave rather lots of attention to the twins Hestia and Flora Carrow in marketing. The characters have no lines and only appear in the Slug Club scenes. They were originally supposed to serve as a clue that there were two Vanishing Cabinets - when Harry realises the one in Borgin & Burke's has a twin but that plot point was dropped. As such the twins serve no purpose. The film also made a note of advertising that Gemma Jones was returning as Madame Pomfrey. She has just one scene, no lines and is only in the background.

The credits and DVD release give an incredibly high billing to Timothy Spall as Peter Pettigrew...who appears for less than a minute and has no dialogue.

Hook drew a lot of press from Phil Collins having a cameo as a police officer. Collins actually got worried that the press was making him out to have a larger role in the film - and feared people would think his scenes had been cut because he wasn't good.

Liam Hemsworth as Gale did appear in quite a bit of promotional material like posters and did a fair amount of press, but wasn't in much of the movie since Gale isn't a participant in the Hunger Games. Though Hemsworth isn't a big name, he's an up and comer that the studio wanted to promote. Also, Gale becomes a more prominent character as the series goes on. Sort of. This is actually a complaint about The Hunger Games in general - it treats Peeta/Katniss/Gale like a big triangle, but Gale barely appears in the first two books of the trilogy at all, thus making it fairly obvious who Katniss will end up with.

Hurricane Bianca: The Movie Poster and DVD cover lists the main cast as Roy Haylock, Rachel Dratch, Alan Cumming, Margaret Cho and Ru Paul. Cumming and Cho are both One Scene Wonders and Ru Paul has a few short scenes as a weatherman on TV.

The trailer to Icebox makes it seem like there's a romance element to the plot. The girl is actually a nameless character who doesn't appear in any other scenes.

Take Up to Eleven with Idlewild. In the trailer, you see a shot of comedian Bruce Bruce as a bodyguard leaving a room. Once you see the film, you realize that the trailer showed his entire role.

Much of the criticism toward Inglourious Basterds comes from a feeling that the Basterds are this trope, not helped by the American marketing focusing heavily on Brad Pitt's titular crew. The European marketing made the Ensemble Cast a bit clearer.

Johnny Depp as the Wolf in Into the Woods. Despite receiving major credit in the promotions and trailers, the character's only in two scenes.

The marketing for Jack and Jill in Mexico made heavy emphasis on including Eugenio Derbez in all the materials, making it look like he was a big character in the movie, while in the movie itself his role was fairly minor.

Paris Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies. Her role was heavily promoted due to her being played by tv star Teri Hatcher; she stands beside Michelle Yeoh on the film poster, implying that they have equal importance. Her total screentime is about 15 minutes. The only important thing she does is tell Bond about the secret lab on the roof of Carver's printing facility in Hamburg. She is murdered offscreen for her troubles, her death marking the end of the first act.

Severine in Skyfall, who appears in the movie just long enough to give her tragic backstory before sleeping with Bond and getting tied up and murdered by Silva in front of an indifferent Bond just barely into the second act.

In Spectre, Monica Bellucci was lauded as being the oldest Bond Girl in the series and was expected to be a game-changer. Everything about that sentence is a lie. Not only is she not the film's leading Bond Girl, but she doesn't even qualify as the Secondary Girl, which this movie lacks. She gets exactly five minutes of screentime despite being promoted as a major character in the film, with some suspecting that further scenes were left on the cutting room floor. As for her age, even if she had been the main Bond Girl of the movie, she would have been the oldest as of filming but not be the first one to be older than Bond. Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore from Goldfinger) is 5 years older than Sean Connery, and Diana Rigg (Tracy from On Her Majesty's Secret Service) has a year on George Lazenby.

John Wick: Chapter 3  Parabellum: Despite being featured heavily in the trailers as Wick's partner, Halle Berry's character Sophia is only in the movie for about 20 minutes during the second act.

Ving Rhames is listed as one of the stars of Julia X, but only appears in the final scene of the film, and has less than 5 minutes screen time.

In Juno, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) was heavily emphasized in the promotional material and trailers. In actuality, he's a supporting character and goes Out of Focus in the second half of the film.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle: Channing Tatum was prominently featured in the posters and received top billing. However in the film itself, his character appeared in 10 minutes before he was put on ice after being infected by the Big Bad's drugs and only showed up near the end where he joins the newly revived Kingsman.

Gary Oldman in Lawless, who was heavily featured in the promotional material and received third billing. In the actual film, Oldman appears in only a few scenes and is billed no less than tenth in the ending credits.

Every original release poster and trailer of Lawrence of Arabia prominently features Jose Ferrer (Oscar winner for Cyrano de Bergerac) as the Turkish Bey, who appeared for two scenes totaling less than five minutes in length. Avoided through various re-releases, as Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif have long since eclipsed Ferrer's fame.

Rowan Atkinson was one of the actors featured on the posters for Love Actually and yet he only appeared in two short scenes and none of the threads in the movie featured him as a major character. Keira Knightley also got high billing (having just become well known with Pirates of the Caribbean), despite only being in four scenes and playing a supporting role in all of them.

Manhunter was broadcast on TV immediately after the phenomenal success of The Silence of the Lambs but the title was changed to Red Dragon: The Pursuit of Hannibal Lector. Of course, anyone who saw the movie in 1986 or read the book would realize that Lector (played by Brian Cox) had about eight minutes of screen time and being that the story is set prior to Silence of the Lambs, Lector is still behind bars for the entire film. The character being pursued was a serial killer called The Tooth Fairy real name is Francis Dolarhyde. Lector's influence is marginal and is mostly part of the main character's backstory. The name change and subtitle was just an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the recent 1991 blockbuster by broadcasting a little remembered film that was based on the previous book in the series.

Maria Hill was featured on many of the posters of The Avengers alongside the team and Nick Fury. Ultimately she gets one action scene to herself in the first ten minutes, and after that is mostly a bystander. As she has at least three deleted scenes, it's safe to say that much of her material was cut for time. Some have theorised it was an attempt to disguise the glaring fact that Black Widow was the only female Avenger.

Sharon Carter in Captain America: Civil War. She is heavily featured in the merchandise and promotional art for the film as a member of Team Cap, including illustrations of her fighting alongside the others against Team Iron Man. In the actual film, she never suits up in the uniform she's seen wearing in the illustrations, nor does she officially join Team Cap or fight against Team Iron Man.

Iron Man's supporting role was greatly played up, with the character being prominently featured in the marketing and merchandise. In reality, Tony only shows up in a few scenes, and only one of those actually has him wearing the armor.

Likewise, Zendaya's mysterious Michelle was prominently featured on the theatrical poster, even though the character doesn't get much screen time. This is particularly egregious since Ned, who has a much larger role, and Liz, who is Peter's actual love interest, aren't on the poster.

Odd example with Doctor Strange's role in Thor: Ragnarok. He only appears in one scene in the first act, and most of the promotion for the movie made sure to avoid exaggerating the size of his role. However, the preview for the movie included in the guide for the D23 expo definitely tried to make it seem like Strange had a much larger part than he actually does, likely due to the success of his solo movie:

If you need even more intergalactic, world-saving action, Thor: Ragnarok in November brings together Thor, the Hulk, and Doctor Strange to face off against intergalactic baddies both familiar and new.

Due to the massive success of his solo movie just a few months prior, T'Challa and his supporting cast were heavily featured in most of the later marketing for Avengers: Infinity War. In the actual film, they don't really get to do much until the last act. Shuri in particular (who was very prominent in the print advertisements) only gets about two scenes before she disappears from the movie. This led to Honest Trailers jokingly speculating that Marvel did not expect the Black Panther film to be nearly as popular as it ended up being back when they were planning Infinity War.

Men in Black 3 has Lily, the Fanservice with a Smile girlfriend of villain Boris played by Nicole Scherzinger. She only appears to free Boris in the opening sequence, then he unceremoniously dumps her by letting her be sucked into vacuum. In a sense, there's also Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K. Agent K does have a significant role in the movie...but it's the young Agent K, played by Josh Brolin, whereas Jones is only in the beginning and end.

Even though you probably didn't get a good look at his face in the split second it's on the screen (Josh Holloway, aka Sawyer, by the way), you probably associate the trailers for Mission: Impossible  Ghost Protocol with a man jumping off a rooftop, spinning around and firing several shots in freefall. This is taken from a scene fairly early on in the movie, and while the character is pretty plot important and does survive the fall, he doesn't live for long afterwards.

Kaya Scodelario as teenage Eve in Moon receives top billing despite having only a minute or two of screen time. To a lesser extent, Dominique McElligott who plays Tess is only seen in a handful of flashbacks and videos. Justified as the only actors who have any significant screen time are Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey.

Motorama: A young Drew Barrymore's face appears as a giant, floating head behind the main character on the video cover, but she's only in the film for a few seconds in a dream sequence.

In Mystery Road, Jack Thomson is billed third in the credits and gets his name on the poster despite appearing in only one scene in the movie.

The trailer for The Next Three Days plays up Liam Neeson's role in the movie, but he's in it for a grand total of about five minutes and doesn't show up again.

Parodied in Planet Terror with Bruce Willis's villain Muldoon. Willis is front and centre on the poster, despite only appearing in one early scene and a few sequences in the final act. This parodies a B-movie tradition of casting a name actor in a small part and then hyping them up as if they were the star. Note that Willis rarely shares the frame with another actor in the film, giving the impression that his shots were all filmed separately in one short filming session.

The advertising for the second Princess Diaries movie would have you believe Princess Asana, played by Raven-Symoné, was a main character. She wasn't.

The title character in Queen of the Damned does not appear until an hour into the movie (unless her statue form counts). The film draws elements not only from its own source novel (basically just the framing story, the book being mostly about the background which gets summarized in the movie in two sentences), but also from The Vampire Lestat, and he is the central character along with love interest Jesse Reeves (whose actress, Marguerite Moreau, never even gets a mention). There's also the fact that Akasha's actress, R&B singer Aaliyah, died six months prior to the film's release, and the movie was heavily promoted as her last "starring" role.

In Roll Bounce, Nick Cannon and Mike Epps. Each are only in three scenes. Epps' garbageman Byron is pure comic relief alongside his partner Victor, played by Charlie Murphy, who doesn't even make the theatrical poster. More egregious is Cannon, who's skate rental clerk Benard gets ONE semi-dramatic scene, yet somehow pulls second billing on TWO DIFFERENT◊DVD COVERS.◊

Happened with the 2009 DVD release of Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird — the cover features Elmo amongst the pictured characters, but the film was made in 1985, before he became a prominent member of the show's cast. In the film he only has a few seconds of screen time at the beginning and end, with only one line of dialogue (part of the song at the end).

Michael Jackson appears on the front cover of A Special Sesame Street Christmas, despite only showing up for less than two minutes and not singing.

Sing Street: The trailers made it seem as if Evan had a bigger part. While his influence is definitely there, he's offscreen for most of the film.

Advertisements for the classic movie musical Singin' in the Rain listed the names of all its stars, which was common at the time. However along with the people you would expect (Kelly, OConner, Reynolds, Hagen, Mitchell) they had Cyd Charisse. She was in the movie for less than 3 minutes as Kellys dance partner during a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment (which was inside another Big-Lipped Alligator Moment). The strange thing is that Charisse was not a star yet; it probably would not have made a difference whether people saw the movie or not. You could chalk it up to fanservice.

Franky Cook, played by Angelina Jolie in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, appears for about fifteen minutes of the film despite her extremely heavy presence in trailers and posters and Jolie's star billing. Audience disappointment over this has been credited for a lot of the film's bad post-release word-of-mouth.

A somewhat debatable example with Venom in Spider-Man 3. Eddie Brock was around for most of the movie, but Venom is seen for all of 15 minutes. However, he did a lot in 15 minutes, including finally doing what no other villain in the movies could do; kill one of Peter's loved ones, Harry Osborn.

Minnie Driver gets top billing in Stage Fright (2014), but her character is killed before the opening credits. Her only other appearance is in a brief flashback during the climax.

Biggs Darklighter, Lukes best friend from Tatooine was almost completely cut out of the final film, save for his scenes during the Death Star battle. This didnt stop him from appearing in the tie in storybooks, comics, and at least one foreign poster (in place of Han Solo nonetheless).

Boba Fett is one of the prime examples of this trope. His sheer popularity and prominent marketing would make anyone who isn't familiar with Star Wars assume that he plays a massive role in the story. He even had his own action figure before The Empire Strikes Back was released. In reality, he has about a minute and a half of screen time, four lines, and his overall contribution to the plot is fairly minimal. His role is reduced even further in Return of the Jedi, where he has a minute of screen time, contributes nothing to the plot, and has one of the most disappointing/comical deaths of any character in the franchise. A lot of his current popularity comes from expanded universe material like The Bounty Hunter Wars... that didn't make it past the Legends reboot.

Captain Phasma was very heavily promoted but did little more than get about 5 minutes of screentime, most of which was spent getting her ass kicked, going down without a fight, and swiftly getting tossed in the garbage. Word of God had that her role would be expanded in The Last Jedi, but she had even less screentime, a brief fight, and was apparently Killed Off for Real.

Poe Dameron. He was heavily promoted as a main character, fueling speculation that he would be part of a new trio of heroes. While he's a major supporting character, he's ultimately just that—a supporting character. He vanishes for the entire middle act after getting separated from Finn on Jakku, and he spends the final act running interference with a Resistance X-Wing squadron while the main characters storm Starkiller Base to rescue Rey and confront Kylo Ren. Unlike Phasma, his role does get greatly expanded in The Last Jedi.

Lor San Tekka. Played by actor Max von Sydow, who played Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon, whose original serials were a major influence upon Star Wars, he was highly expected to be a prominent character, but he's killed by Kylo Ren within the first five minutes of the film.

Luke Skywalker, bizarrely. He frequently got the Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer treatment in promotional material, but his presence in the movie was played up by Disney and Mark Hamill received second billing (Harrison Ford got first). In the finished film, he only appears in two very brief scenes, getting no lines and less than a minute of screentime.

Though posters for Suffragette gave Meryl Streep, who plays Emmeline Pankhurst, top billing and featured her next to Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham-Carter and she was prominently included in the film's trailer, she only appears in person in one single scene in the entire film and has less than five minutes of screen time.

The Joker was the focus of much of the film's marketing, but the majority of his scenes were cut, causing complaints from viewers and even Jared Leto.

Katana was pretty prominently advertised as well, but in the movie, she doesn't have a lot of lines or screentime. Some critics and fans even compared her treatment to the below-mentioned Jubilee from X-Men: Apocalypse.

The trailers for Transformers: The Last Knight made it look like Izabella would have a large role in the film. Instead, she disappears almost completely after the first 15 minutes — in a film that's nearly 2 hours and 30 minutes long — with only a brief return appearance near the end. It's not just Izabella, lots of characters appear in the initial trailer only to be given a limited amount of screentime.

Nemesis Prime, the brainwashed Optimus, who is implied to be major character in the previews and trailers, doesn't appear to fight Bumblebee until near the end of the movie.

It also looked like Megatron would have a big role in the story, but after the first Autobot/Decepticon battle, which the Cons lost in the most embarrassing fashion ever, Megatron vanishes for the rest of the movie, and doesn't return until the climax, only to get one shotted by Optimus at the end.

Grimlock only has a handful of scenes in the entire movie, and never shows up for the final fight.

Valentine's Day has a huge cast made up numerous A-listers. The movie was advertised one of two ways, the first was by advertising all of the stars, regardless of how big their role was or by saying it "starred" Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner despite them having roughly two scenes and their characters were clearly meant to be looked down upon. Even worse was that all the reviews focused almost entirely on Swift, judging her performance despite her being a cameo. The Spiritual Successor, New Year's Eve managed to avoid this by only advertising the stars that had major parts (in fact there are several stars who don't appear in the commercials).

The marketing from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader placed a lot of emphasis on the White Witch, to the point of making her appear as the primary villain of the film. In fact, the character only appears sporadically, and only as an illusion- the real Witch never shows up at all. Tilda Swinton expressed surprise that she was in the trailer, saying she'd only been on set for "about twenty minutes". Additionally Peter and Susan were included in the trailer, despite Peter having just one scene and Susan two.

In the film Welcome To Collinwood, George Clooney has little more than a cameo as the older criminal mentor-figure Jerzy, despite being very heavily featured in the trailers.

The Wings poster gives fourth billing to Gary Cooper. His character, Cadet White only appears for three minutes at most before he dies performing stunts.

The Direct-to-Video action film Wrong Side of Town actually starred Rob Van Dam. However you would not know that by looking at the DVD cover where Batista is featured front and center. He plays a minor supporting character that was only in three scenes. RVD was billed second and is in the background alongside third billed Ja Rule who was an even better example of this trope. The rapper plays a gang leader who is shot by Batista literally three minutes after being introduced. Fourth billed R&B singer Omarion has a similar role to Ja Rule. Strangely other actors that have bigger roles in this movie note (Edrick Browne, Lara Grice, Jerry Katz, Ava Santana, and Louis Herthum) are not mentioned at all. According to some people this was because Batista was the best actor in it.

Angel is featured heavily in all the promotional material, as part of the whole "the original X-Men team in the comics finally together in film." He only has three scenes: he refuses the cure and flies away; he very briefly shows up at the X-Mansion for the sole purpose of allowing them to state categorically that the school is still open; and finally he saves his father's life during the final battle. He does nothing in between. The promo posters even showed Angel in an X-Men uniform despite the fact that he never officially joins the team (or dons a costume) during the movie.

The same can be said of Colossus — he has one line (which is about as long as both of his two lines in X2: X-Men United combined) and he's really only in the film for the Fastball Special.

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Anna Paquin as Rogue has a total of one scene (and a handful of seconds at that) in the theatrical release. She even got her own Empire magazine cover despite the fact that most of her scenes were cut from the final film.

X-Men: Apocalypse: Jubilee got a fair amount of focus in the advertising along with the co-stars who played the new recruits Cyclops, Jean, and Storm. In the middle of the movie, it looks like she's going to be on the same squad of rookies with Cyclops, Jean, and Nightcrawler, even going with them on their teen rebel mall trip as a heroic team of four to contrast the Horsemen. Then she gets knocked out and left behind at the mansion in the next scene, leaving the others as a Power Trio instead.

The trailers and TV spots for Deadpool 2 heavily played up the introduction of X-Force, complete with most of the team getting their own Twitter Emojis. Domino is the only member of the team to actually get significant screentime, as Shatterstar, Bedlam, Zeitgeist, Peter and Vanisher are all Killed Off for Real very shortly after being introduced. The film's marketing was deliberately misleading to make their deaths a Shocking Swerve.

Jay Laga'aia is billed prominently in Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, but actually plays one of the zombies, and gets maybe a couple of lines of dialogue before being turned.

Literature

The cover of Shaman Blues displays the hero, the villain, and a ghost that in the story proper appears only in three very brief scenes, one of which doesn't even identify it.

Most The Chronicles of Narnia books are named after either the protagonist or some majorly plot-relevant idea. The Silver Chair... not so much; the titular chair, which appears on most covers, is essentially just a minor MacGuffin that appears in only a handful of chapters and gets destroyed about two-thirds of the way in.

In season 5 of 24, Carlos Bernard was promoted back to the main cast as Tony Almedia after spending the previous season as a recurring character and appeared heavily in promotional materials. He then spent most of it off screen in a coma and then halfway was seemingly killed off for the remainder of the season. He was in a quarter of that season's episodes in total, compared to the rest of the cast who all appeared in at least half of the season if not more. In season 6 Regina King joined the main cast as Sandra Palmer, even getting the And Starring credit for that year, yet she was only in a handful of episodes. In fact, she actually is notable for having the least amount of appearances total out of every actor or actress to ever be a main cast member on the show.

In Babylon 5, Robert Rusler, who appears as Warren Keffer in 6 out of 22 episodes in Season 2 but is in the main credits for the entire season. A case of Executive Meddling, since the network wanted J. Michael Straczynski to introduce a "hotshot Top Gun kind of pilot." The commentaries reveal that JMS hates this kind of character, and as soon as the network stopped giving him notes, he offed the character as soon as he possibly could.

Band of Brothers includes Simon Pegg in the opening credits of the first two episodes. He's in the background for a couple of scenes in the first episode and has just one line. He's killed off in the first five minutes of the second.

In Better Call Saul, Michael Mando is credited in all ten episodes of the first season, but his character Nacho Varga only appears in four of these episodes, and often only for just a scene or two. His role is greatly expanded for season 2.

The Bewitched season one DVD features Paul Lynde on the label for its third disc. While fans would recognize Lynde as Samantha's Uncle Arthur, the actor actually only appears in one episode from the first season — "Driving is the Only Way to Fly"—as an entirely different character.

The third season DVD set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer heavily feature images of Spike as much as the other post-season one cases do, and he even appears on the label of one of the discs. He also appears in only one episode of the entire season.

Due to having Loads and Loads of Characters, this is common on Degrassi: The Next Generation; in a given season, some characters will have lengthy story lines, while other become almost completely Out of Focus, sometimes appearing in just a few episodes. Characters this has happened to include Toby, who, though prominent in the first few seasons, quickly became The Artifact as the cast expanded, and Leia, who had two centric B-plots after she was introduced, then promptly disappeared.

"The Visitation": John Savident as the Squire was promoted as the story's main guest star. He's actually a Teaser-Only Character who gets murdered along with his family in the first scene, without even meeting any of the regular cast.

"Let's Kill Hitler": Hitler. Despite being the title character and featured in the trailers, he has about five minutes of screen time before he is punched out by Rory and stuffed in the cupboard, where he is forgotten for the rest of the episode.

"Mummy on the Orient Express": Pop singer Foxes was promoted as one of the episode's main guest stars along with Frank Skinner. She appears briefly as a torch singer on the train doing a version of "Don't Stop Me Now", and was probably a computer program in-universe anyway.

"Spyfall": Stephen Fry as "C" was promoted as one of the main guest characters. He is assassinated not more than 15 minutes into Part 1 after only a few scenes. Given that the actual most important guest star in the story, who was not announced at all, is playing a Walking Spoiler of gargantuan proportions...

Tom Wopat and John Schneider famously held out during the fifth season of The Dukes of Hazzard and were replaced by Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer playing their heretofore unmentioned cousins Coy and Vance Duke. After Wopat, Schneider and the studio agreed to terms, Bo and Luke returned. Even though Coy and Vance left 15 minutes into Bo and Luke's first episode back and were never seen nor referred to again, Cherry and Mayer were still shown in the opening credits the rest of the season.

In the early seasons of Frasier, Dan Butler, who played Bulldog Briscoe. The character was very cut off from the "real" main cast of Frasier, Niles, Daphne, Roz and Martin, was a fairly two-dimensional coworker at KACL who only ever appeared as comic relief or a foil for Frasier or Roz, and had neither any specific importance to the show that would justify billing him along with the main cast, nor any deep connection to the rest of the billed characters. He was eventually dropped from the opening titles, appearing as a guest star in the end credits in the episodes he appeared instead. It's pretty jarring to see the character squeezed into promotional images and covers along with the five "real" leads, when Eddie the dog was more of a main character than he was. This was due to the original premise being that the series would focus on both sides of Frasier's life - work and home. They wanted characters from both sides to feature, and that's why Bulldog was in there along with Roz (because originally Roz wasn't supposed to become such close friends with Frasier). Obviously the dynamic changed and that's when they left him out of the photos.

Grey Damon as Hastings Ruckle in Season 5 of Friday Night Lights. Although billed as a main cast member, he gets fewer scenes than, for example, Dallas Tinker, who is listed as a guest star.

The rules governing who will and who will not receive billing in the opening credits for Game of Thrones seem increasingly arbitrary. Episode count and even amount of face time you receive per episode is apparently not a factor in whether or not you are billed in the opening credits as a regular or in the closing credits as a guest star. It is not uncommon for regular-billed actors to receive less screen time or appear in fewer episodes than non-regulars. Several of the actors billed as regulars are little more than semi-frequent guest stars, to wit:

In the first season, Conleth Hill appears in 6 episodes as Varys, but is billed as a guest star. He gets opening credits billing in every subsequent season, despite his appearances becoming less frequent. For that matter, Aiden Gillan's appearances have decreased each season, but he was credited as a regular from his first appearance onward.

Rory McCann's main role in seasons 1 and 2 is to stand around looking threatening, while uttering maybe one or two lines per episode. He is billed as a regular for both. He gets more screen time and character development beginning in the third season, though, and his development really took off in the fourth.

James Cosmo appears in five episodes in the first season, three in the second and four in the third. Guess which season only credits him as a guest star?

Nearly all the Dragonstone crew, actors Stephen Dillane, Liam Cunningham and Carice van Houten, seem to appear very infrequently compared to nearly all the others. Ms. van Houten appeared only four times in the second season, while Cunningham appeared in 6. While van Houten's appearances increased in the third season's, Cunningham's decreased. They hardly appeared at all in the fourth season. They have all been billed as regulars from their first appearance.

Hannah Murray (Gilly) was added to the opening credits in Season Four, despite appearing in only three episodes; only half the amount of appearances she had in Season Three.

Harry Lloyd appeared in five episodes. Credited as a regular for all of them.

The series mostly copes with this problem by changing its opening titles for each episode, depending on who's actually in the episode. Most prominently, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau appears in only a few episodes during the second season, but when he does, he's always the third billed behind Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey. This was already the case, though less noticeable, in the first season, since all the regulars from the first season, barring Mark Addy and Harry Lloyd, appear in at least eight of the ten episodes.

Played about as straight as possible in "First of His Name". Peter Dinklage (Tyrion) doesn't appear, so Nikolaj Coster-Waldau gets top billing, despite his only role in the episode being standing silently watching Tommen's coronation.

Tina, much of the time, is usually lucky to get two lines an episode. In the whole first season she had exactly one song to herself.

Jessalyn Gilsig is credited as a regular for the first 2 seasons but Terri stops appearing regularly after the first 13 episodes only having a few scattered appearances afterwards. In season 2 she only appeared in roughly 6 episodes.

The Mother herself from How I Met Your Mother. She's in the fricking title and finally appears for real in the eighth season finale and her story is finally told throughout the final season. Her actress, Cristin Milioti, is billed as a regular cast member, but only appears in only half the episodes. This is apparently due to a rule by the showrunners that she is to only appear in episodes they personally wrote.

The advertisements for the iCarly episode "iFind Spencer Friends" hyped up Emma Stone as a guest star. When the actual episode aired however, we find out that she only appeared near the end of the episode, has about 30 seconds of screentime, and plays absolutely no role to the main plot.

One of Jim Carrey's first roles was in the 1981 television special Introducing... Janet, where he gets second billing and his character doesn't appear until after at least 15 minutes. That special was released on video in 1995, shortly after he'd become a big star, and the packaging makes it look like he is the star of the special, being the main focus of all video covers, the only actor whose name appears on the cover (despite getting second billing), the video description talks about him more than the main character Janet, and when released on video the special was retitled Rubberface.

Lois & Clark: Tracy Scoggins as Kat Grant, a society page reporter in the first season. Given little to do, dropped after the first season.

Characters on Lost are invariably either some of the most dynamic and developed characters on TV, or completely wasted. Daniel Faraday, an important character in season 4, disappears for most of season 5, and dies immediately upon re-appearing. Caesar was hinted as being mysteriously integral to the plot before Season 5 but he dies less then halfway through the season. Then he gets replaced by the equally mysterious "Bram" in a sense, who dies in the first episode of Season 6.

Daredevil (2015): Claire Temple during the first two seasons. She only appears in five out of 13 episodes in the first season, and she doesn't have any big impact on the plot after Matt saves her from the Russians. In the second season, she only has three episodes: an early episode where Foggy approaches her seeking help scouring the hospitals for Matt after he's captured by Frank, and later being asked by Matt and Brett to shelter kids they've rescued from the Hand (and later quitting when the Hand attack, and the hospital covers up the event). In between the two Daredevil seasons, she also got an extended cameo in the season 1 finale of Jessica Jones (2015). It wouldn't be until Luke Cage (2016) that Claire finally began to take on a more prominent role, functioning as Luke's sidekick for the second half of season 1.

Ramon Rodriguez gets main credits billing, yet Bakuto has fewer episodes across Iron Fist and The Defenders than Madame Gao, who is considered a Fake Guest Star.

Sacha Dhawan, who plays Davos, gets main credits billing even though he's only in the last five episodes of the season. Justified, since he returned to be the main antagonist of the second season.

The Defenders (2017): Due to the time constraints of eight episodes, juggling four leads AND a very large supporting cast, the supporting cast kinda get pushed to the wayside and save for Claire, Misty, and Colleen, have about maybe 12 to 15 minutes screentime max. Additionally, regardless of how much screentime they get, the supporting cast in question all get title credits billing depending on if they were billed in the title credits of whatever solo show or shows they originated in.

The Punisher (2017): Karen Page's appearance in the first season falls into the same trap that Rosario Dawson fell into during Daredevil season 1: Deborah Ann Woll was pushed front and center during the promotional work, when she's basically a guest star and only appears in 4 of the 13 episodes, and doesn't contribute much to the plot beyond helping Frank find Micro's family, and later him having to save her life from Lewis Wilson. Meanwhile, Amber Rose Revah (Dinah Madani), the actual female lead of the show, was practically ignored. The marketing team for The Punisher team was widely suspect by many to be trying to draw in "Kastle" shippers and viewers from Daredevil, where Frank had originated. In fact, Karen's inclusion wasn't a part of Steve Lightfoot's story plan at all to start, until he decided to find a place for her after watching her scenes with Frank in Daredevil season 2, which would explain why her scenes feel disconnected from the rest of the narrative.

In MerlinKatie McGrath who plays Morgana has been in the main credits since day one, but numerous episodes (especially early on) feature Morgana doing very little beyond looking beautiful in the background. Sometimes this even extends to periods of the show when her character is playing a vitally important role (such as early Series 4) but still often results in very limited screentime.

Gregory Itzin was a series regular on the short-lived Mob City, but only appeared in four of the show's six episodes, and only had a speaking part in three of them.

Various promotional images for Muppets Tonight prominently feature Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Animal, as if they are main characters, but due to Frank Oz's directing career, their presence on the show (especially Fozzie's) wasn't as big as it was on The Muppet Show. Various promotional images for The Jim Henson Hour prominently feature Zondra and Ubu, who only appeared in two episodes.

The Office (US): Ryan has been part of the opening credits since the first season despite being an ultimately minor character with shifts in role and personality to justify his place there. His inclusion in the opening credits was sometimes questioned in later seasons, as he's now considered to be even less significant than other characters whose actors are not mentioned in the opening credit. He has been removed from the opening in season 9, but only because his actor BJ Novak has left the show rather than acknowledging that Ryan's role had diminished.

Michael Raymond-James' character Neal Cassidy aka Baelfire was written out of the series midway through season 3, but was still credited as a regular for the rest of it, even though he only made a few brief appearances in flashbacks for the remainder of the season.

The show really hyped up Frances O'Connor being cast as Belle's mother for Season 4. She appears in one episode and only in the first five minutes.

Alexandra Metz's casting as Rapunzel got a surprising amount of attention - for the Race Lift they gave the classic blonde, and the popularity of Tangled. She appears in a supporting role in just one episode.

Season 5 heavily advertised that Lancelot, Ruby and Mulan were returning. Lancelot returns, has one episode in which he plays a decent role, and is Demoted to Extra with his story unresolved. Ruby and Mulan have just one episode.

Subverted with the 100th episode. Cruella was advertised as returning, and only the outside of her car is shown in the episode itself. However she appears in subsequent episodes as part of a story arc.

Police Squad! had this as a Credits Gag. The opening prominently credits "Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln!" who never appears in the show itself. And then the episodes introduce a "Special Guest Star" who is promptly killed off in the credits and never appears in the show or is even part of the plot.

In Power Rangers Samurai, one of the selling points was the return of Bulk, now training Spike, the son of his former sidekick Skull. Unlike the early days of the franchise, Bulk and Spike only very rarely interact with the Rangers, almost never have any significance to the plot, and there are quite a few episodes that don't even include them at all. One scene where they do sort of interact with the Rangers outside an ice cream shot, they are shot entirely from behind, which only highlights how the majority of their scenes were shot completely separate from the main show.

Riverdale has Josie McCoy and Kevin Keller listed as main cast members, and they appear in its buffer promos for The CW. But by the second season both of them appeared with decreasing frequency and in the third they are both little more than extras and either do not appear in episodes at all or, if they do, may not actually be part of the plot or even have any lines.

After not being included in the first two seasons of the show, the appearance of Tuck in the BBC's Robin Hood was loudly heralded amongst the advertisers for season three, and interviews with actor David Harewood mentioned a "dark back-story" for the character. Tuck gets one character-centric episode (which is just pointless filler), and is then a tag-along member of the gang from then on.

Tim Meadows had one of the longest tenures but rarely was onstage. It even became a Running Gag in the backstage sketches. "Are you still on the show?"

Starting with Dennis Miller in The '80s it's been traditional for a Weekend Update anchor to only appear in other sketches sparingly despite being credited as a full cast member. Norm MacDonald, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler and Cecily Strong did appear prominently in sketches, as did Michael Che once Jay Pharaoh left the show, but with the exception of MacDonald, all of them were co-anchors. Their anchoring partners (Tina Fey, Seth Meyers and Colin Jost) rarely if ever appeared in sketches. Seth Meyers did appear in sketches prior to taking the anchor job.

Scream Queens (2015) heavily hyped up Ariana Grande appearing as Chanel #2. She's killed off in the pilot. In this case, she was meant to be in around nine episodes - but due to scheduling conflicts with her tour, she had to have her role cut down. To a similar extent, Charisma Carpenter (who played Grande's mother) was advertised as appearing on the show. She has just two brief scenes in one episode. Nick Jonas likewise was hyped up as being as prominent at Glenn Powell's Chad and Diego Boneta's Pete. He doesn't even appear in half as many episodes as they do.

In the late 80s and early 90s, a series of Sesame Street videos based on the Israeli co-production Rechov Sumsum called Shalom Sesame, focusing on being a travelogue for Israel. Many of the video boxes for the individual shows released in the 90s show American Sesame Muppets front and center despite the fact that the Muppet on the box only appears in one partially dubbed segment in the show. An example is the Chanukah episode; the video box shows The Count and Elmo - they only appear near the very end during a dubbed "Do De Rubber Duck," where Elmo doesn't even have a line.

Johnathan Schneider's character was killed off 12 episodes in the 5th season and only appeared in two episodes afterwards in that season but continued to be credited as a main cast member for the entire season. Another example is Erica Durance who played Lois Lane. In the first season she appeared in she was only ever billed as a Special Guest Star for the 13 episodes she appeared in. She is also the only character to appear on posters and the DVD box other than Clark himself. When she got a Promotion to Opening Titles the following season she still only appeared in 13 of the 22 episodes, and it wasn't until around the penultimate season that she finally appeared in the majority of a season.

Darkseid has the worst case. In a poster of season nine he is the only character depicted other than Clark. He does not appear at all.

Soap: All cast members are credited only in episodes where they actually appear. But since (a) the cast list in the closing credits is done alphabetically, (b) Jimmy Baio as Billy Tate rarely has anything to do even in episodes where he appears, and (c) Credits Pushback, he's sometimes the only cast member credited even if all he did was stand around in a family crowd scene or something. Even when the credits aren't truncated he's still always listed first in episodes he appears in.

Star Trek: The Original Series: Yeoman Janice Rand was featured heavily in early promotional material alongside Kirk. In fact, she received more focus in the marketing than Spock, and was intended to have a major role as Kirk's recurring love interest. Grace Lee Whitney also contributed to the development of the tricorder and the Dangerously Short Skirt worn by female crew. However Rand ultimately only appeared in the first half of season 1 due to Whitney's dismissal.note With explanations ranging from not wanting Kirk to have a serious girlfriend, Whitney spurning the advances of (or fending off an outright assault by) a Paramount exec, to substance abuse problems making her difficult to work with.

Travis Mayweather on Enterprise. He was the pilot (when Captain Archer was also a pilot, and perfectly able to take over for Travis when needed) and had previous extensive experience in space (which was less and less of an issue as the show progressed).

To a lesser extent, Hoshi Sato from Enterprise also qualifies. She was the linguist and communications officer. Most of her work is not particularly interesting, so while she does get some scenes doing her actual job, she's more often treated as an office intern doing whatever odd jobs need doing. Since the show suffers from severe The Main Characters Do Everything, this means she'll do things she is grossly unqualified for, such as manning the transporter (which 200 years later in Star Trek: The Next Generation was manned at all times by specialist staff).

Harry Kim on Voyager applies as well, as with the exception of a few episodes that were specifically about him, he usually gets the obligatory one line.

Jake Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Despite being credited as a main character for the show's entire run, the Son of the Emissary appeared in less than half of the show's episodes. Not as strong a case as Mayweather and Kim, as Jake was a well-developed character who saw a lot of development during the series. That his actor was a teenager for much of the show provides a reason for his relatively small number of appearances, since he was simply unable to shoot as much as the adults.

Jake was also never intended to be a full cast member either: his purpose, when the show was created, was to provide fodder for Sisko, as the original idea for the show was "a father tries to raise his son on the frontier." (In fact, according to the original series bible, Jake was listed as a recurring character instead of a major one.)

Becomes more blatant in Season 7, since not only is Jake Out of Focus for much of the season, but the show's heavy usage of the same recurring characters means that several supposedly non-main characters (particularly Garak and Nog) significantly eclipse Jake in both screen time and plot relevance.

Jett Reno of Star Trek: Discovery was prominently featured in Season 2 trailers. She was a principal character in two episodes, but then disappeared for a large chunk of the season before showing up again in a couple of scenes for episode 12. (It may have something to do with the fact that she's played by Tig Notaro.)

Misha Collins is credited as a main cast member for all the season five and six episodes of Supernatural he appears in, including the ones where, in his own words, he "turns up, gives a piece of sage advice and disappears."

The trailers for season 2 Titans featured Aqualad, with some of the marketing making it seem like he'd be joining the team as a major character. In reality, he turns out to be a Posthumous Character who'd already been killed off five years prior to the start of the show, and the only episode he actually appears in is a flashback detailing the events leading up to his death.

Suzie in Torchwood, sort of. She was listed in the opening credits of the first episode, and released beside the rest of the cast as a major character. Suzie was a member of Torchwood at the start of the first episode, and quite important to the first episode. She's the villain of the episode, and ends up dying by the end of it.

Total Divas Season 3 hyped up the new additions to the cast in Paige and Alicia Fox. Paige was prominently featured, but Alicia appeared entirely in a supporting role. She didn't get an episode in which she did anything of note until the fourth season.

Kevin Conroy was a member of the main cast for the first season of Tour of Duty, but the writers could never figure out how to properly integrate him into the storylines, as his character was a commander who normally stayed on base. Stuck in Hawaii with nothing to do for most of the working week, he set up a small stand on the beach and sold sketch portraits to tourists out of boredom. His character was dramatically killed off before the end of the season.

Jenna in the second season of The Vampire Diaries, really doesn't do anything of note despite being a main character. Also Tyler in the first season, who's sole purpose seemed to be getting in fights with people.

In Veronica Mars, Teddy Dunn's character Duncan Kane was written out midway through the second season, but continued to get credited in the show's opening for that year. This notably did help hide his surprise return in the season finale where the paid an assassin to kill Aaron Echolls.

Simon Reynolds as Daniel Dickinson in the first season of Warehouse 13. A particularly egregious case in that several of the "guest stars" appeared quite a lot more than he did in that span. A case can also be made for Leena (Genelle Williams) who was 'credits only' in four of the twelve first season episodes, and, generally, until her key role in the final story arc, merely puttering doing something intuitive, and not really essential to the 'A' or often even 'B' storyline. Of the thirty-eight episodes of the first three seasons, she was only in the credits for twelve, despite technically being main cast.

The Wire didn't have much rhyme or reason to its opening credits. Early on they seemed pretty judicious about who got opening credits billing, even crediting people who had storylines centered around them as guest stars, but in the final season they moved a number of former guest stars into the opening credits, such as Neal Huff, Gbenga Akkinagbe, and Michael Kostroff, despite their characters not really doing anything more than they had in previous seasons. Also, Tristan Wilds and Jermaine Crawford received Promotion to Opening Titles despite having less to do than the previous season.

Sheena Easton, who plays Queen Anne, has a spot in the opening credits of Young Blades despite appearing for about a minute each in two of the first five episodes — and one of those is just to explain that she's gone on vacation and a Suspiciously Similar Substitute will take her place. She gets a larger role in the next few episodes, but still doesn't appear at all in 6 out of 13 of them.

Dustin Brooks from Zoey 101. Through he is credited as a main character for all 65 episodes, he only appears in 25 episodes and rarely contributes to the plot in a major way.

Music

The most common incarnation of this trope in music is when featured artists get credit either for backing vocals that would not be immediately notable, or an otherwise trivial contribution to the song. Another common phenomenon occurs when a musician becomes a big star, and recordings featuring them in minor instrumental or backing vocal roles at the start of their career are rereleased with their contribution exaggerated in the packaging.

His collaborations with longtime wifeFaith Hill zig-zag this. "Let's Make Love" and "I Need You" had Tim as the lead artist, but were full-fledged duets that credited Faith; "It's Your Love" and "Meanwhile Back at Mama's" credited her for merely providing backing vocals, while "Angry All the Time" did not. On singles where Faith was the lead artist, "Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me" credited Tim's backing vocals, but "Like We Never Loved at All" did not (although he still appeared in the video).

He got credit for singing a far-from-prominent backing vocal on then-labelmate Jo Dee Messina's late 2001-early 2002 hit "Bring On the Rain". Even more, he already had a single out at the time ("The Cowboy in Me", which actually succeeded "Bring On the Rain" at #1).

"Diamond Rings and Old Barstools" gives full credit for the backing vocals by Catherine Dunn (his cousin).

And again in 2016, when McGraw got full credit for a barely discernible backing vocal on Big & Rich's "Lovin' Lately".

George Jones got chart credit for Shooter Jennings' "4th of July" even though his only contribution to the song was singing a few bars of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" at the end  a part that was cut out of the radio edit!

The Wailers sing a chorus at the end of Kenny Chesney's "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven", and still received chart credit despite their part being cut from the radio edit. Strangely, said credit did not show up until the song's second week at #1.

Zig-zagged: "You and Tequila" and "Wild Child" gave full credit to backing vocalist Grace Potter (of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals), but "El Cerrito Place" in between did not.

"Settin' the World on Fire" gives credit to P!nk, who gives barely noticeable backing vocals, but also sings one line near the end.

Kenny also had an inversion when George Strait did not get duet credit on "Shiftwork" until it was halfway up the charts, as Kenny's label had to get permission from George's.

An even more bizarre inversion is his guest vocal on Reba McEntire's "Every Other Weekend". A few stations had been playing the song before it was a single, so it was just listed as "Reba McEntire with Kenny Chesney" on the charts. Once it was released as a single, Reba's label couldn't get permission to keep Kenny on, so the radio edit replaced his vocals with co-writer Skip Ewing. However, due to Kenny's much bigger name recognition, most stations continued to play the Kenny version anyway. As a result, it was credited to "Reba McEntire with Kenny Chesney or Skip Ewing" for one week, then to just Reba for the rest of its run.

As with "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven", David Nail's "Let It Rain" did not give credit to the barely-audible backing vocalist Sarah Buxton until it was just shy of #1.

After Brooks & Dunn split up, some of their solo singles displayed this:

Kix Brooks' "New to This Town" credits Joe Walsh, whose only contribution is a very short guitar solo.

Bizarrely, Ronnie Dunn's "Damn Drunk" credits Kix Brooks for backing vocals. As Kix was always the less prominent of the two, it's a Brooks & Dunn song in all but name.

Similarly to the "Damn Drunk" example, Wynonna Judd's 2004 single "Flies on the Butter" gave credit to Wynonna's mother Naomi, who provides backing vocals. Since they recorded as The Judds in The '80s prior to Wynonna's Breakup Breakout, one is left to wonder why they didn't just credit it to The Judds — especially since "Stuck in Love" four years prior did just that despite being from an otherwise-solo Wynonna album.

Clint Black also gave credit to his wife, Lisa Hartman Black, simply for singing backup vocals on "When I Said I Do" and "Easy for Me to Say".

Inverted with Ty Herndon's "It Must Be Love". Sons of the Desert sing a very prominent Call and Response on the chorus, but received zero chart credit. On the other hand, Sons of the Desert did get chart credit on the country and Hot 100 charts for their counterpoint on Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance", even though the pop remix omitted them.

Accordionist Flaco Jiménez got a credit on The Mavericks' "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down" entirely for, you guessed it, playing accordion.

Another strange inversion: Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman of The Byrds recorded Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" (which the Byrds themselves had previously recorded in 1968) on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 1989 album Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Volume Two. Even though the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band features prominently on this version, it was credited to just McGuinn and Hillman.

Brad Paisley's "When I Get Where I'm Going" credits Dolly Parton, even though (as with "Bring On the Rain", above) she only sings barely audible background vocals that you may not even notice the first few listens.

Also similarly, Alison Krauss and Billy Dean got credit for backing Kenny Rogers on "Buy Me a Rose". Dean can be heard echoing the line "rest of your life" on the final chorus, but he and Krauss are otherwise rather unobtrusive.

Yet again with Krauss. She and Vince Gill can barely be heard singing backup on Mark Chesnutt's "It's Not Over", but they still got chart credit.

Sara Evans got full chart credit for singing backing vocals on The Warren Brothers' "That's the Beat of a Heart". To her credit, she sings one line by herself near the end.

Similarly, John Rich sings backing vocals on Gretchen Wilson's "Come to Bed", and sings just one line on the bridge by himself, but still got full chart credit.

On Blake Shelton's 2014 single "My Eyes", barely-discernible backing vocalist Gwen Sebastian (a contestant on The Voice, where Shelton is a judge) gets full chart credit.

The group's 1979 album Dynasty featured Peter Criss on the cover, even though he played on only one song.

Years later, the group's 1998 reunion album Psycho Circus prominently featured original members Criss and Ace Frehley on the cover and in promotions even though Criss only on one song and Frehley on two or three (Kevin Valentine and future member Tommy Thayer played drums and guitar, respectively, on most of the album).

"Like We Never Had a Broken Heart" featured Garth Brooks on backing vocals, which was enough to get him credit on the Canadian charts (this was before they sang duets together and got married). However, Garth did write the song for her (along with one of his usual writing partners, Pat Alger).

She got full chart credit for a backing vocal on Josh Turner's 2008 single "Another Try", even though Yearwood had her own single ("This Is Me You're Talking To") out at the same time.

Her 2014 single "PrizeFighter" has backing vocals from Kelly Clarkson, who gets full credit despite being only in the background.

An older example: Gus Hardin (a female) had a Top 10 hit in 1984 with "All Tangled Up in Love". The song gave full credit to Earl Thomas Conley, whose only contribution was a barely-noticeable backing vocal.

Yet another inversion: A then-unknown Janie Fricke sang the entire third verse of Johnny Duncan's "Thinkin' of a Rendezvous" but did not receive chart credit.

She did, however, receive credit for Merle Haggard's "Natural High" on which, as with many examples on this page, she only sang backup.

Pixie Lott gets a "feature" credit on the Selena Gomez song "We Own The Night" but she really only sings backing vocals. Even so, the backing vocals are almost buried in the mix.

Todd in the Shadows references this in his review of "We Are Young" by fun. and Janelle Monáe. He says that Monáe's part was so unobtrusive that he never even realized she was singing on it, then mocks the concept by claiming the video is now a crossover with JewWario, who appears on-screen for two seconds to say "hi".

Colbie Caillat on Taylor Swift's "Breathe". It's supposed to be a duet, but Colbie's voice is so drowned out, it sounds like just Taylor sing. On a flipside, Taylor is this on John Mayer's "Half of My Heart" (who incidentally is an advertised on Fall Out Boy's cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It", where he only plays the guitar solo).

Numerous songs that feature Fred Schneider as a guest just feature him making the occasional shout, rather than singing or rapping anything.

One of the covers of "Big Yellow Taxi" is by the Counting Crows featuring Vanessa Carlton. However, her total contribution throughout the song is less than 15 seconds.

Subverted/avoided in the song "Sixth Avenue Heartache" by the Wallflowers. Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows sings background vocals, but the song is not credited as being by The Wallflowers featuring Adam Duritz.

Andrew Ridgeley of Wham! did not record very much with Wham!, but was always listed as a member. His contributions included the occasional guitar playing and co-write, but most of their work was down to George Michael and session musicians. Ridgeley was mainly listed as a band member for his sex appeal. This is why George Michael has gone seamlessly from Wham! to his solo career, but Ridgeley has floundered.

Subverted with the Tim McGraw-Taylor Swift duet "Highway Don't Care", which also features Keith Urban on lead guitar (but not on vocals). The album credits both Urban and Swift, but on the charts, only Swift was credited due to her being the only one of the two who actually sings.

"Hangover" is supposedly a song by PSY featuring Snoop Dogg. If you heard it without seeing who's credited, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's a Snoop Dogg song with PSY providing backing vocals.

"Uptown Funk" is supposedly a song by Mark Ronson, featuring Bruno Mars. However, one could easy think this is simply a Bruno Mars song with any random band playing (as opposed to many modern Santana songs where, despite the fact that he doesn't sing, it is easy to tell they are his songs by the guitar style).

"Time of Our Lives" is a song equally credited to Pitbull and Ne-Yo, and it appears on both their albums. Honestly, it feels more like Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo, since he does 90% of the song. Pitbull does half the chorus and all the verses, while Ne-Yo only does the other half of the chorus and the bridge towards the end.

Pharrell is credited as a feature in 2 Chainz' "Feds Watching", but apart of a very brief introduction, he only sings backing vocals in the chorus, which is completely unnoticeable without headphones.

"Darker Than Blood" is by Steve Aoki featuring Linkin Park. It actually feels closer to being "Steve Aoki featuring Chester Bennington", the other members make little contribution, and Mike doesn't rap in the song (he does give his vocals, but it's hard to notice).

Inverted with Avicii's songs. The featured vocalists are never credited for their contribution, most notably Aloe Blacc in his smash hit "Wake Me Up!", despite the fact they sing the entirety of the song.

"The South" by The Cadillac Three gave full credit to guest artists Dierks Bentley, Florida Georgia Line, and Mike Eli (lead singer of the Eli Young Band), who sing "This is where I was born and this is where I'll die" during a Subdued Section. However, most of this part was cut from the radio edit, so they are only heard for a few seconds on the radio edit. Even on the full version, their vocals are so closely blended that it's hard to tell who they even are.

Ricky Skaggs is credited for barely-discernible backing vocals on High Valley's 2014 single "Make You Mine" in the band's native Canada. However, the American re-release two years later did not credit Skaggs.

Vince Gill is credited for an almost unnoticeable backing vocal and brief guitar solo on Chris Young's 2016 single "Sober Saturday Night".

In 1994, record producer Scott Rouse remixed several of Jeff Foxworthy's stand-up routines with musical backing, and usually choruses from contemporary country music artists as well. One of these, "Party All Night", credited Little Texas for singing the chorus... and oddly, also credited Rouse for his production work. This is especially odd since Rouse did several more of these (plus several more for Bill Engvall), and this wasn't even the first of the bunch, yet none of the other ones went so far as to give him a chart credit.

Strangely inverted on Ronnie Milsap's 1988 hit "Old Folks". The song was featured on one of Milsap's albums, and credited as a duet with co-writer Mike Reid. However, Reid sings most of the song either by himself or with Milsap on harmony, with Milsap only singing the second verse.

Rodney Atkins' 2018 single "Caught Up in the Country" credits the backing vocals provided by the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

Jim Brickman songs frequently invert this. As Brickman is only a pianist and not a vocalist, all of his singles feature vocalists who are credited, while his name is still on the song for his piano work.

Professional Wrestling

Happened a lot when Raw had the weekly celebrity guest hosts. Some would be routinely involved throughout the show. Others would only arrive, plug their project or whatever and barely be seen. Trish Stratus had an opening introduction, one backstage segment and a short match for example. This was about fifteen minutes of screen time in a two hour show.

Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley's parody commercials were done in protest to their lack of TNA bookings, despite the reported importance of The Motor City Machine Guns to the X and Tag Team divions.

When Ring Warriors joined the National Wrestling Alliance in 2011, the NWA decided to use it to reestablish an NWA presence in the Caribbean. Several Puerto Rican were brought in with help from Carlos Colon, Bahamian Bad Boy Bo Bo Brazell was contacted and Kahagas's mouth piece, Haitain wrestler Tyree Pride, was brought out of retirement. Aside from Pride however, none of these wrestlers were used when Ring Warriors first started doing shows in the region in 2012, and it was Played for Drama when La Rosa Negra crashed a Nassau Bahamas show to protest not being booked.

Radio

Trillian in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series doesn't have much character development, supposedly because the actress' performance didn't give Douglas Adams much to work with, and because her purpose was to have someone who Arthur could talk to about Earth, but Ford served that purpose just as well. Her character is much more developed in the later books (and in the movie).

Let's say basically every time an attraction has a memorable original character that only shows up a few times, expect to see them in almost all the ride promos, and on tons of the merchandise. A good example would be the Hitchhiking Ghosts from The Haunted Mansion. They only show up at the end, but their scene is so recognizable that they appear on all of that ride's merchandise.

There are some Disney properties that only have a show or a meet and greet, but they still get tons of attention in advertising. For example, Phineas and Ferb only had a meet and greet and some merch throughout the parks, but got tons of promotion in the early 2010s at the height of their show's popularity.

In Star Tours, C-3PO is quite prominent on the attraction poster, but only appears in the queue as an animatronic with R2-D2. However, this was averted when Disney updated the ride, because now C-3PO has accidentally become pilot of the Starspeeder 1000.

With a show called Mickey's Philharmagic, you'd expect Mickey Mouse to be the main character. In reality, although his presence is still there throughout the attraction, he only shows up twice at the beginning and the ending. The real star happens to be Donald Duck.

In the American parks, SpongeBob SquarePants easily falls under this trope. He gets tons of promotion at the Orlando park, despite his franchise only being featured on a parade float, a meet and greet, and merchandising. However, he can be justified, as he's about as recognizable to the public as Mickey Mouse is at Disney World.

Speaking of Nickelodeon shows, for Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, the characters from Hey Arnold! were shown a lot in earlier advertisements of the attraction, but they only showed up in the ride for like 5 seconds.

Although The Simpsons Ride is set at Krusty the Clown's theme park, he doesn't even appear in the main ride portion of the attraction.

Theatre

The revival of Hair featured actress Allison Case prominently in its advertising. She was on every poster, every TV appearance and most likely to be the one to speak for the cast. Case played Crissy, and while she's in the whole show (like everyone in Hair), her character had one song and maybe two scenes with her as the center.

Estelle Parsons in Nice Work If You Can Get It. She showed up at the very end of the show and that was it.

In Dissidia Final Fantasy, Shantotto and Gabranth were secret characters with no real effect on the storyline, only showing up in flashbacks. In the prequel, they're much easier to unlock, appear on the cover and are shown standing side-by-side with the other characters in the opening FMV...but they still have no role in the main story.

The advertisement for Jump Force heavily featured Light Yagami overseeing battles, alluding to the idea he would be a major villain in the game. In the actual game itself, he contributes very little to the story mode and his arc is unresolved, instead ending on a blatant Sequel Hook.

Your avatar in White Knight Chronicles. Despite the trailers and the back of the box, Leonard is the main character of the game, and the character that you put all the effort into creating will be quickly relegated to standing in the background of cutscenes, nodding dumbly along with whatever Leo is saying, with no one bothering to even interact with him or her most of the time — if your avatar even appears in the cutscene to begin with. You're not even required to have yourself in the party, whereas the game forces Leo in at various story points.

In Fire Emblem Fates, Hinoka easily has the least presence in the story of all the siblings from both sides. Unlike all the other siblings, she has barely, if any, impact or presence in the story besides her scenes in the pre-route split chapters and her recruitment chapters in Birthright and Revelation, meaning that virtually all her screentime is limited to supports and My Castle skits. Hell, it has actually been discovered that she has more story lines in Conquest than in Birthright, her own route! Possibly justified as she was added to the game fairly late into its development, after much of the story had already been finalized.

The Avatar from Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem is similar. Despite being promoted by trailers as a major mechanic (create your own Fire Emblem character), the Avatar has very little role in the plot past the Prologue, only existing as a Satellite Character others can provide exposition to, and aren't even required to be in the party for most of the game. The masked assassin Legion is another example: being featured very prominently in promotional materials and being one of the few new characters to get official art. In the game proper, he's easily the least developed of the Quirky Miniboss Squad, and why he has an army of clones of himself is never explained.

To promote Fire Emblem: Three Houses, seven characters were added to Fire Emblem Heroes: the male and female versions of Byleth, the player character; Claude, Dimitri, and Edelgard, the leaders of the three houses; Sothis, the mysterious "Girl on the Throne"; and Kronya, one of the villains. Of all of them, Kronya has the least amount of screen time, showing up in one chapter to kill an important character, before being killed herself, and having almost nothing to do with the overall storyline. It seems like she was only added to Heroes because of her distinctappearance.

Tentomon and Gomamon appear on the PAL boxart for Digimon World, alongside the playable Agumon, Biyomon, Gabumon, Palmon and Patamon, who in total make up the original lineup of main characters from the anime, of which this game is not an adaptation. Tentomon is only a common enemy in-game, with only his evolved form, Kabuterimon, available to the player character, so he is at least featured. Gomamon and all of his associated forms are entirely absent from the game.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's marketing campaign heavily advertised the fact that Patrick Stewart would be playing the voice of the series' perennial Big Good, Emperor Uriel Septim VII. In the actual game, he only has a few brief lines of dialogue before he gets killed during the tutorial mission.

Promotional art for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords heavily features Jedi Master Atris, portraying her as a kind of light side counterpart to Sith Lord Darth Nihilus. However, while she is important to the game's backstory, her involvement in the actual game is much smaller than it should have been; she was originally supposed to be a party member and, in an alternate ending, replace Kreia as the Big Bad, but, like many other features, it was cut short by rushed development.

The same goes for Nihilus, who was also featured prominently in advertisements but had a diminished role in the actual game. Doubles as Covers Always Lie, thanks to a piece of promotional art which showed Atris and Nihilus in a lightsaber duel. They're never in the same place at the same time.

The cover of Kingdom Hearts III features many of the important characters over the series, though some only showing up during the final battle (Terra, Roxas and Xion) with special mention towards Namine who only appears in an optional missable scene in "The Final World" and in the game's ending cutscene. The former scene is so easy to miss that several fans were surprised when her name showed up in the credits. Similarly is the Darkling from Union X on the cover who doesn't even appear in the game at all.

Several trailers for Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance featured a scene with Vanitas standing beside Young Xehanort and speaking to Sora. As it turned out, that scene was Vanitas's only appearance in the entire game, and to add to that the line he says in the trailers is his only line in the whole game.

You'd think with a name like Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, that famed PlayStation mascot Spyro the Dragon would be the main character, right? Wrong. Spyro's name was slapped on for being recognizable. In reality, Spyro's role in the game is no bigger than any of the other plastic toys. He isn't even the central character on the box art, that role belonging to Stealth Elf. As the series has grown in popularity, Spyro has only been pushed further away from the spotlight. He's still around, but it really doesn't matter if he's in the game or not at this point.

In Shin Megami Tensei II, five characters (Aleph, Beth, Daleth, Gimmel, and Zayin) are generally prominently shown. Beth dies early on, Daleth drops out of the plot soon after, and Gimmel's importance is only revealed in a short sidequest in which you kill him. In the end, only Aleph and Zayin maintain prominence, with Hiroko and Lucifer being the other actual main characters.

In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, the European box art prominently shows Dante from Devil May Cry on the cover, implying he is a major character. In the actual game, he only antagonizes the Player Character once or twice, past the first time you have to go out of your way to encounter him, and he has no meaningful impact on the story.

In Shin Megami Tensei IV, Navarre is often advertised alongside the rest of the player's group of Samurai. However, while they are all important characters, Navarre bows out of the story after the first dungeon and is never mentioned again save for one unimportant sidequest. Apocalypse, on the other hand, makes him a full-blown party member, subverting the trope.

In Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, one of the movie Labyrinths known as Junessic Land hypes up mighty carnivorous dinosaurs as the Big Bad and the weak Herbivore Dinosaurs as protagonists. In reality, the carnivorous dinosaurs are nothing other than FOEs patrolling the upper floors and the Herbivore Dinosaurs are revealed to be Greater Scope Villains who refused to confront any carnivorous dinosaurs at all and ostracized anyone who doesn't follow the decision made by the majority of herbivores.

Sega's Rent A Hero No. 1 for Dreamcast, the remake of the Genesis title Rent A Hero, featured in each and every piece of promotional material Rent A Hiroko, the titular character's Distaff Counterpart. In the actual game, though, her presence is somewhat limited and, while the ending sort of implies that she would have had a much bigger part in the sequel, no further games were ever made, thus making players wonder what all the fuss about her was about.

Pulp Adventures main menu screen is an artwork featuring several of the campaign's party members. While most of them are plot-critical protagonists directly involved in the plot, some others are much less prominent. Conan, Zorro, and the Lone Ranger are special characters only playable in their own level (said levels represent the protagonists of the main timeline reading books). Also, the Spirit is available as a regular party member but he is completely optional (he must be bought with Prestige Points instead of being obtained for free when the plot proceeds).

Poliwhirl was ubiquitous in early Pokémon merchandise, despite being almost completely ignored in the games, and never having more than a cameo role in the anime's first two seasons. note (This was likely due to its round shape, which toy licencees can easily mold in plastic, foam, or as a plush; consider how common other round Pokémon, like Jigglypuff and Koffing, were in early mass merchandise.)

With the start of a new generation, a Mythical Pokémon is generally revealed either first or very early on. As the name implies, Mythical Pokémon are unobtainable in a normal playthrough outside of limited-time events, and as such a player is likely never going to even hear of them, much less fight/catch them.

Pokémon Gold and Silver were the first games to feature unique Olympus Mons for each game, but Lugia and Ho-oh weren't important to the plot at all. In fact, you could beat the True Final Boss without ever fighting them. The remakes fixed this by making them required encounters.

Pokémon Black and White had Zorua and Zoroark as some of the first new Pokémon to be revealed. However, neither can be encountered in normal gameplay; they could only be accessed with event Pokémon (the events required to get either of them are long past) and aren't used by any trainer aside from N in his final battle. This is cited as one reason why Zoroark failed to follow in the footsteps of resident Breakout CharacterLucario, leading to Zorua and Zoroark becoming common in later games.

Promotional art and trailers for Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia made a great showoff about surfing on an Empoleon's back as one of the main things in the game. How many times it happens? Once. Two or three if you want to go for 100% Completion.

The game's trailers revealed Zygarde's new formes, which made it appear as if it would have a big role in the plot (particularly since, unlike Rayquaza, Giratina and Kyurem, it never got an Updated Re-release or sequels focusing on it). In-game, Zygarde is nothing more than a Collection Sidequest with no plot significance.

The Ultra Beasts were hyped up as having a big role, while in the actual game only UB-01 Symbiont/Nihilego has any role in the main plot, with the rest being shunted off to postgame status.

The Tapus, despite being presented as Alola's revered guardian deities, play miniscule roles overall. While Tapu Koko gets decent screentime during the main game, the other three are never seen until the main story's over and are otherwise glossed over, receiving offhand mentions at best.

The Balrog Tar-Goroth was featured heavily in the game's advertisement, indicating he'd be an major antagonist working for Sauron and sent to hunt down Talion and the Wraith. Turns out in the game itself that he is a secondary villain with no direct relation to the plot - he was awakened by an entirely unrelated event and is causing destruction on his own. He appears for only two missions very early in the questline he is involved, and he isn't even the Arc Villain, but rather the necromancer Zog the Eternal (who is trying to bind the Balrog to his service).

The Agonizer is a subversion: he got his own trailer, but he follows the exact same rules as every other orc, appears at random, and it's possible to permanently kill him during your first few hours, so he can be made one if the player so chooses.

Final Fantasy IX features five of its party members on the cover. Zidane is The Hero and Garnet, Steiner and Vivi all have major roles in the story and signiicant Character Development but Amarant is the last to join, and has the least overall role in the game's story.

Final Fantasy XV has Lunafreya Nox Fleuret billed as the game's main heroine, and side materials such as Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and the Brotherhood anime set her up to be a prominent figure, but she only appears for roughly half an hour of the 30+ hour game, and even then very little of it is spent interacting with the main heroes and/or alive. Especially egregious in the Royal Edition, where she appears on the cover of the game, but her added screentime amounts to a brief cutscene of her spirit appearing to provide a Deus ex Machina to help the heroes get past a magic barrier, with little in the way of new insight on the character.

Early posters and promo material for Fate/Grand Order tended to make a big deal out of a gang of Original Generation characters: the opening even shows off one of each class, in the form of Altera, Arjuna, Scathach, Ushiwakamaru, Jekyll, Mephistopheles, and Darius. Saber Artoria Pendragon is also prominent in nearly all early material, if not outright front-and-center. However, while all of them are playable, most of the group aren't particularly plot-relevant; the first four at least have semi-prominent showings in various story chapters or limited events, but the others are lucky if they even get cameos. Artoria stands out in particular, because she's only appeared once in the entire main story, in a flashback. Ironically, the game showcases a lot of future versions or past versions or alternate versions of her, some of whom have been extremely prominent and popular... leaving the version of her that shows up in all the advertising in the dust.

The trailers for Hunt Down the Freeman made it appear as though Gordon Freeman (the protagonist of the Half-Life series of games) was the Big Bad of the game. However, he actually only shows up in one scene at the end, and the Big Bad is someone else posing as Freeman.

The Japanese box art◊ for Super Mario RPG prominently features Yoshi on the cover along with the five party members, suggesting that he's a major character in the game. Yoshi is only prominently featured in one optional area and while he can be summoned into battle with a certain item, he has no involvement in the main story.

Waluigi appears in a lot of group art of the Mario series' main characters (like the image on its characters page, which contains him alongside the likes of both Mario Bros., Wario, Donkey Kong, and Bowser), despite the fact that he's never appeared in a single mainline game and has only made physical appearances with playable roles in the franchise's spinoffs, like the Mario Party, Mario Kart and Mario Tennis games. The fact that Waluigi was deemed important enough to be drawn in the promotional artstyle at all would qualify him for this, as everyone else drawn in the style has at minimum appeared in one main series game (like Birdo, whose only main appearance was Super Mario Bros. 2, or Daisy, who has Super Mario Land and maybe Super Mario Run to her name), with everyone else being either a significant character (like the Mario Bros., Peach, Bowser, Yoshi, and the Koopalings) or a common enemy (like Goombas, Boos, Koopas, Spinies, and Dry Bones).

Darth Vader appears on both the front and back cover of LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, and on the front appears as a looming floating head in the sky alongside General Grevious, but given that the game only covers the first two seasons of its source material, before that show even foreshadowed Anakins dark transformation, Vader is only playable after collecting all the minikits for Legacy of Terror.

Despite the advertising for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney  Spirit of Justice hyping up Maya Fey's return, she doesn't appear at all in three of the game's five cases, plays a comparatively minor part in another, and the one case that she does play a central part in confines her to prison during the investigation segments. The only case where she has the same sort of role that she had during the original trilogy is the optional DLC case.

Advertising for Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 promoted Scotland Yard coroner Courtney Sithe as one of its major characters. In the game itself, she isn't much more than a "villain of the week", being the culprit of the one case she appears in and only mentioned in passing afterwards.

Higurashi: When They Cry's Rena Ryuuguu is featured in all promotional art, crossovers, side-games and is practically synonymous with the entire When They Cry franchise. She's only really, truly important for two arcs out of eight.

The true route of Maji De Watashi Ni Koishinasai S is often referred to as the Koyuki route. However, while it does give her a happier backstory and saner personality she appears very little after the opening. getting only a brief fight and then an optional sex scene at the end. The trouble is that, as noted in the original VN, she has quite a bit of overlap with Miyako and what does set her apart are traits that are rather incompatible with being a love interest and that she doesn't have if you've altered her backstory. So there isn't much to do with her that you couldn't do with a more important or popular character.

Spirit Hunter series:

The Hanayome spirit features predominantly in promotional material for Death Mark, and is even the only spirit to receive an acrylic charm design. In the game proper, the fight against her is the easiest and she has no ties to the overarching plot, as opposed to the later spirits Miss Zoo and the Kannon Soldier.

As with Hanayome before her, The Urashima Woman from Spirit Hunter: NG is the spirit that was featured the most in promotional artwork, and even received a novella that expanded on her character. In the game proper, she has no connection to the protagonists or the story as a whole, as opposed to all the spirits that come after her.

Web Animation

Senpai Club often shows Rock-and-Roll Senpai with the main cast during the opening, implying he's at least prominent to some degree. In-show, however, the most he's been seen was the club introduction and a couple of Cameos.

In The Grossery Gang webseries, Fungus Fries was set up to be a major character, appearing in the sizzle reel, a good chunk of the promotion artwork, and getting one of the longer bios the webseries characters get. In the end, he ended up relegated to just the toyline. He would eventually make his debut in the webseries for Series 4, three seasons after his official release.

Lady Rainicorn was originally intended to be a main character of the show, and even to this day appears on merchandise and in the splash pages of various tie-in Comic books. Despite this, she hasn't even appeared in several seasons at a time. Episodes that feature her tend to mostly focus on her children instead, making her even more underdeveloped.

Lumpy Space Princess suffered a similar fate. With so much merchandise and appearances in advertisements you'd think she'd be a main stay, but her roles as a main lead are very, very scarce.

Roberta Tubbs from The Cleveland Show was billed as a main character, but her screentime was much smaller compared to the rest of her family. While Meg and Hayley both got Demoted to Extra over time, they at least started out as prominent characters on their respective shows; unlike the other two, Roberta was never prominent to begin with.

The Dragon Prince: Runaan is hyped by the promos as one of the major characters of the show. He however, only has any relevance in 4 out of the 9 episodes of the first season, most of which he is rather secondary and contributes relatively little to the plot compared to other major characters.

Freakazoid! has a villain named Kid Carrion, who resembled a zombie cowboy. His appearances in the show's opening suggests that he was intended to be a recurring villain, but his only appearance in the actual series is a silent cameo in "Relax-O-Vision". He doesn't even appear with the other villains in the show's Grand Finale in spite of one-shot villain Invisibo being among them.

Futurama spoofs this trope: in the opening credits for the first film, "Bender's Big Score", the new character Zylex is announced with great fanfare... only to appear just for a couple of seconds, while begging for food!

Hey Arnold!: Nadine is the most prominently featured girl in the opening sequence aside from Helga, but in the series, she's either a background character or a Satellite Character to Rhonda.

The Hollow: Death was in the show's trailer as much as the other characters, but he only appears as a major character in the third episode, with another brief appearance in the finale.

Although she gets a lot of screentime, Minka in Littlest Pet Shop (2012) has not had an episode focused on her as of late 2013 and is the only major character with this distinction. She has received a B-plot in two episodes, however, but in both cases, Minka is incessantly doing one single thing for most of the B-plot, meaning the story makes very little progression. For most of the rest of the series, she just hangs out with the other main characters doing whatever they're doing.

In the TV special "Dance Pantsed" heavily promoted special guest star Ringo Starr. He has about three minutes of screen time and he doesn't even sing. And while a song & music video for "I Want To Be A Powerpuff Girl" was shown during the special's breaks, it wasn't part of the actual story.

Despite appearing in the promotional material, posters, animated bumpers, video covers, and even the intro amongst the villain roster, Roach Coach had only one starring episode and, after he is revealed as a cockroach operating a human-like robot body, he never returned even for in-episode cameos.

The title sequence of Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! featured silhouettes of Fred, Daphne, and Velma in spite of the series having them out of the spotlight for the majority of the series in favor of focusing on Shaggy and Scooby. The only episodes to have the entire Scooby Gang together and with every member having a speaking role are the series premiere "Shags to Riches" and "Almost Ghosts", with the episode "Inside Job" only featuring Fred and Daphne as silent cameos.

Frosta is one of the Elemental Princesses and shows up in the opening and promotional material as a major character and in equal importance to characters like Mermista and Perfuma, but she appears very little compared to them, not helped by her late introduction in the first season. She leaves right after that and doesn't show up again until the Season 1 Finale as an 11th-Hour Ranger to join the Rebellion. Averted in later seasons, though, where Frosta remains a recurring part of the ensemble cast with a full focus episode in season two, and some cute interactions with Scorpia in season four.

Netossa and Spinnerella were portrayed as secondary characters that would be a source of help to the main characters, but they show up in the background only and only even speak or act in the Season 1 Finale. Even in the fourth season, where they got a focus episode, we don't learn much about them, and as much of the episode's focus is on Glimmer becoming more ruthless and willing to make morally dubious decisions to win as anything related to Netossa and Spinnerella.

Downplayed with Rogelio, the Lizard Folk cadet in Adora and Catra's squad. He was supposed to be a secondary character as much as Kyle and Lonnie, but he has much less characterization and screen time than either of them and doesn't even speak through all the first season. Most aspects of his personality can only be inferred and his name was only revealed by the crew's Twitter. Lampshaded when he is finally named in the series during season two, and Scorpia has no idea who Lonnie is talking about until she spells it out.

The deal they made out of U2 appearing on the 200th episode and they only had a scene and a bit. Before that was "Lisa's First Word", the episode "starring" Elizabeth Taylor... wherein she spoke one word! (But it was Maggie's first word, so it was pretty important.)

Another that was heavily advertised was Alyson Hannigan; her character has very limited screen time and only has three lines of dialogue.

Sky's (and FOX's) promotion of "Elementary School Musical" was pretty bad too, emphasising the guest voices of Glee regulars Lea Michele, Amber Riley and Cory Monteith while completely ignoring the presence of Flight of the Conchords, even though Messrs. Clement and McKenzie's characters had far more screen time, were essential to the plot, and writing original songs for the episode!

"Bart Star" was advertised as a Crossover with King of the Hill even though Hank Hill is on screen for only a few seconds. It probably set a record for shortest Crossover ever made. Additionally, Word of God says these shows don't exist in the same Universe, making it even weirder.

In "Today I Am a Clown" Lisa mentions having an imaginary Jewish friend named Rachel who she created to make up for having no real friends when she was younger. Rachel finally makes an appearance in the 600th episode. Except that 600th episode is "Treehouse of Horror XXVII", and Rachel is a murderous spirit who kills all of Lisa's friends out of revenge for Lisa forgetting her.

Kevin Smith's appearance in Highway To Well was hyped up. He only has one line of dialogue and five seconds of screen time.

Parodied in the early episode "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride". George Clooney was advertised as a guest star on the show. Yet, in the episode itself, he is just Stan's gay dog, Sparky. All he does is bark. Similarly, another episode features Jay Leno providing the meowing sounds of Cartman's cat.

Played straight, however, with Isaac Hayes as Chef. The end credits for the first 9 seasons featured the credit "Featuring the voice of Isaac Hayes as "Chef"" right after listing the voice cast, even if Chef had no lines in an episode or didn't appear in the episode at all.

A ton of celebrities were advertised to appear in the SpongeBob SquarePants 10th Anniversary special, "Truth or Square" but almost all of them only made cameos, most of them don't even appear in the trimmed-down rerun version, and none of them appear in the animated segments instead appearing in the live-action Patchy segments. This trope is however, averted with P!nk's appearance as she got to sing Scurvy.

Star Wars: The Clone WarsSeason 7: Obi-Wan Kenobi is featured very prominently in the poster for the season, standing alongside Ahsoka and Anakin and towering over the other characters featured in the poster. He pops up in four episodes and is only around for short periods of time in each one. Conversely, the Bad Batch and the Martez sisters are far more prominent, despite being smaller in stature on the poster.

Most of the regular cast from Taz-Mania is acknowledged in the opening, including characters whose appearances were very few and far-between (including Wendell T. Wolf, Buddy Boar, The Kiwi, and The Bushrats). In fact, some of those characters who ended up appearing in many episodes (such as Digeri Dingo and Francis X. Bushlad) weren't in many episodes during the first season.

Both Ironhide and Arcee were actually given this treatment in the Japanese opening for Transformers Animated. Ironically, according to the AllSpark Almanac, Ironhide was intended to become a main character in the fourth season before the show was canceled at three.

Cliffjumper was one of the main advertising faces of the Transformers: Prime promos, got a preview comic devoted to him and even a handful of figures when the toyline was released, and generally seemed to be the future main-character of the show. He dies within the first couple of minutes of the pilot, then becomes a zombie and is killed again, and only gets a Flashback episode halfway through the series. After that, he received several other toys depicting him as a Terrorcon zombie.

Voltron: Legendary Defender: Much of the marketing for Season 7 played up the importance of Adam, Shiro's ex-boyfriend. This even included images of Adam and Shiro being used as official headers for the show's Netflix page. In reality, Adam only appears in two flashback scenes, and dies at the end of the second. The character's fate and general lack of importance ended up igniting an internet firestorm, with one of the show's creators even issuing an apology on Twitter.

X-Men: Despite being one of the main team members in the intro, Beast is arrested halfway through the second episode and spends the rest of the season in jail, only appearing briefly a few times for the rest of the season. The following seasons would make up for this, making him a full-time member of the team again.

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